Nostoc commune Vaucher, a macroscopic cyanobacterium, has long been appreciated as a healthy food and traditional medicine worldwide. Accumulated evidence has demonstrated that it possesses a wide range of remarkably protective physiological and pharmacological activities, largely based on animal and in vitro studies. In this review, we summarise and update evidence regarding the chemical compo...

(New aerophytic morphospecies of Nostoc (Cyanobacteria) from São Paulo State, Brazil). Brazilian aerophytic biotopes are almost completely unknown regarding to cyanobacterial flora. During the study of this special flora, three morphospecies of the genus Nostoc from different habitats in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, were found. Based on their morphology, especially by formation and shape of ...

Because the number of fungal species (mycobionts) exceeds the number of algae and cyanobacteria (photobionts) found in lichens by more than two orders of magnitude, reciprocal one-to-one specificity between one fungal species and one photobiont across their entire distribution is not expected in this symbiotic system, and has not previously been observed. The specificity of the cyanobacterium N...

Four chlorophyll-protein complexes have been resolved from the cyanophyte, Nostoc sp., by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis at 4 C. Complexes solubilized by SDS from Spinacia oleracea were run for comparison. As has been well documented, the P700-chlorophyll a-protein complex from the higher plant and blue-green algal samples are similar, and the light-harvesting p...

Three new cyanobacterial strains, that have been previously purified from the hydroid Dynamena pumila (L., 1758), isolated from the White Sea, were studied using scanning and transmission electron microscopy methods and were characterized by using almost complete sequence of the 16S rRNA gene, internal transcribed spacer 16S-23S rRNA, and part of the gene for 23S rRNA. The full nucleotide seque...

We present a study about AFM imaging of living, moving or self-immobilized bacteria in their genuine physiological liquid medium. No external immobilization protocol, neither chemical nor mechanical, was needed. For the first time, the native gliding movements of Gram-negative Nostoc cyanobacteria upon the surface, at speeds up to 900 µm/h, were studied by AFM. This was possible thanks to an im...

The transcription of structural genes encoding two hydrogenases in N(2)-fixing cultures of the cyanobacteria Nostoc muscorum and Nostoc sp. strain PCC 73102 were examined by reverse transcription-PCR. A low level of oxygen and addition of nickel induce higher transcript levels of both hydrogenases, whereas molecular hydrogen has a positive effect on the transcription of the genes encoding only ...